Knitting methods to minimize an after-treatment effort after completion of the knitting have been invented, according to which the knitted fabric is bound off at an end portion thereof in the process of knitting the knitted fabric, using a flat knitting machine comprising front and back needle beds having a number of knitting needles on their upper surfaces and disposed in front and back to be opposite to each other and capable of being racked in the longitudinal direction of the needle beds.
To take one example of these knitting methods, a knitted fabric is knitted in the form of, what is called, an integral garment which is knitted in the way that respective parts of the knitted fabric, such as a front body, a back body, a right sleeve, and a left sleeve, are knitted in accordance to their respective shapes and after completion of this knitting, those parts are joined together to form a knitwear. Also, another example is a method of knitting, what is called, a seamless knitted fabric, such as a sweater whose neckline is formed while the bodies and the sleeves are joined together, in such a manner that the after-treatment effort after completion of the knitting can be completely or substantially eliminated.
When the seamless knitted fabric is knitted in the form of the tubular knitted fabric, whose front and back bodies are continuously connected with each other at both ends thereof, on the flat knitting machine, a diameter of the tubular knitted fabric to be knitted is dependent on the width of the needle beds used for the knitting. Accordingly, the knitting of a tubular knitted fabric of a larger diameter requires wider needle beds of the flat knitting machine used for the knitting.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of knitting a tubular knitted fabric, whose first and second knitted fabrics are continuously connected with each other at both ends thereof, on a flat knitting machine comprising at least a pair of front and back needle beds in such a manner that the knitted fabric is folded in three layers in at least a part of regions of the first knitted fabric of the tubular knitted fabric and then overlapped with the second knitted fabric, so as to be knitted in four layers.